The sound of a clockwork motor, the gears ticking softly as their metal teeth interlocked and separated. Melanie Parkhurst had listened to the rhythmic sound for the last five years. The sound reminded her of a watch, slowly running down until it died. Her own life was similar. For half a decade, she'd been wandering a world beset by the undead, fighting and killing any of the walking corpses that happened to cross her path, wondering when her time would be at an end.

She was alone. Her companions were gone, having either taken refuge in fortified cities or died fighting the undead. One by one, they'd departed until only Melanie remained. She'd considered many times following the example of those who'd survived, finding a place to live and settling down. Every time the thought had arisen, she'd quickly rejected it. Melanie had changed too much. Peaceful, civilian life wasn't for her any longer. She was a wanderer of the wastes, a hunter of zombies. This was her path, her destiny, and nothing would change that as long as she lived.

Her worn leather boots, secured with five belts each between her ankles and knees, caused small stones to crunch together as she walked the forgotten road. The sun beat down mercilessly from a hot summer sky, but Melanie had a hood up over her head, shielding her from the heat and brightness. The use of the hood was more from habit than necessity as she rarely felt either the heat or the cold. After what she'd been through these last few years, the ambient temperature didn't even register in her mind.

Without humanity to curb its influence, the natural world had reasserted its dominance with a vengeance. Vines had invaded cities, climbing the pipes and support structures on the outside of buildings while also tangling themselves around the wrought iron lampposts. Trees had grown up everywhere, breaking through sidewalks and contorting the foundations of buildings. Wherever a tiny crack or crevice existed, plants grew, oblivious to the damage they inflicted on human constructions.

Even with the trees and thick undergrowth, Melanie managed to recognize her surroundings when she entered the small town. It had been her home for the fifteen years before the zombie outbreak. The streets no longer had carriages taking people two and fro, the hooves of their mechanical horses clopping along the cobblestone. The people who'd once lived in the town had either fled, died, or been turned. Melanie didn't know why she'd come here. There was nothing left for her in this place except dusty memories.

Her eyes looked up, but no airships were to be seen, not even the clouds were visible in the endless blue sky. Melanie remembered how after the outbreak, people had sought refuge in the flying machines, away from the zombies on the ground, but it had been a trap of its own as any infection getting onboard left the humans with nowhere to flee.

Walking with a measured pace, she approached the house she'd shared with her mother. The wrought iron fencing had long ago rusted away, leaving nothing behind to show it had ever been there. Pushing aside the overgrown hedges, Melanie proceeded to the front door.

The copper door of the front entrance was old and tarnished black. Melanie turned the crank beside the door to open it, but the gears hidden in the wall were no longer functioning. She pulled hard on the crank lever, causing it to break off in her hand. The door had moved slightly, forming a gap between the door and the jam. She was about to try and force the door open the rest of the way when a wheezing moan reached her ear.

Spinning around, Melanie saw three zombies moving slowly down the road toward her, obviously attracted by the noise of the breaking crank. Despite having a flintlock pistol holstered behind her on her right side, she wanted to avoid making any further noise, so she reached across with her right hand to unsheathe the sword hanging on the left side of her hip. Her speed and skill were more than enough, and she put down the zombies with hardly any effort on her part.

Forgetting the undead almost instantly, she returned to her home, putting away her sword. Taking a firm hold of the door with both hands, she pulled hard and opened the door with a screech of protesting metal. Melanie was certain the undead would've heard the noise, but rather than taking out her sword again, she decided to use a different weapon for the close confines of the house's interior.

Tapping her wrists together activated a pair of concealed weapons. She bent her wrists to keep her hands and fingers back and out of the way as twelve inch long blades shot out of her sleeves on spring loaded pistons, locking into place at full extension. The wrist blades gave her the use of a pair of knives without the possibility of losing one in battle. They also kept her hands free should she have to hold onto something while still needing to fight.

The interior of the house was dark. To the left of the doorway was a wooden wall covered in ornate carvings of trees and flowers. Melanie took hold of one of the flower blossoms and turned it several times to open the gas lines to the lighting. Pressing a knot on a tree, she activated a sparker, igniting every light in the vicinity of the entryway. Melanie doubted the lights would last for long as it was being provided by whatever limited supply of fuel was still available in the tank in the back yard.

The zombies weren't the only threat in the broken remnants of civilization, and Melanie had encountered a number of desperate people willing to do anything to survive. If there had been any zombies in the house, they would've come to investigate her noisy entrance, but because none had yet to make an appearance, she knew the creak of the floorboard she heard in the kitchen had to be from someone still living.

Readying her blades, she walked down the hallway toward the rear of the house, turning at the final door to reach the kitchen. The central work table had been shoved up against the cabinets, but the potbelly stove still stood where it always had, in the far corner by itself. New additions to the kitchen included a bedroll and large bag left in the middle of the room where the kitchen table had been formerly.

Melanie knew someone had been living here since her departure, but she couldn't tell for how long. The pantry door, opposite the door leading into the basement, was slightly ajar. Although Melanie focused her attention on the ornate door of the pantry, she knew the person hiding in her house wasn't there. Her instincts told her the pantry had been left open intentionally as the real hiding place was the basement.

She pretended to be fooled by the ruse, moving carefully to the pantry door and edging it open with one of her wrist blades. The hinge squeaked ever so slightly, and it was enough for the man waiting in ambush to fling wide the basement door and charge out into the kitchen, a sharp hatchet in his hand.

Melanie turned with incredible speed, deflecting the hatchet with her left wrist blade while the right swung up to press against the underside of the man's jaw.

"Who are you?" she asked, her tone soft and measured.

"The name's Eddie Herren," the man informed her. "Who might you be?"

"Melanie Parkhurst," she replied in kind. "What are you doing here?"

"Trying to survive," Eddie answered with a slight shrug. "What else is there to do these days? Would you mind removing your knife from my throat?"

"If you try to use your hatchet on me, you won't have a throat any more," Melanie warned.

"Understood," Eddie said with a fearful swallow. As she backed away, he put the handle of the hatchet through a specially designed loop on his belt, letting the hatchet hang at his side like an Old West gunslinger. "I haven't seen anyone else in some time. What brings you here?"

"This was my home," she told him. Tapping her wrists together, she engaged the mechanism to retract her blades. "I don't know why I came back."

She knew it was ill-advised to put away her weapons in the presence of a stranger. Her mother always told her to be wary of strangers but it was those strangers, those very men and women her mother warned her about, who had made her what she was; an expert hunter, the very best of the very best. But, it had come at a high cost.

"How long do you think you'll stay here?" Melanie asked.

"I don't know," Eddie admitted. "I might've stayed longer if the door still served as an effective deterrent to the undead, but now..."

"I can close it before I leave," she offered. "I'll be on my way soon."

"You can't leave now," Eddie protested. "It'll be getting dark shortly, and it's more dangerous to encounter the undead when you can't see them coming."

"I've never had a problem with them," Melanie countered. She could hear the clockwork ticking, and she knew her time was nearly done. She didn't want to do this in front of Eddie, but she concluded it didn't really matter one way or another.

Melanie pressed the twin gears etched onto the emerald stone of her choker twice in succession. The internal latches released, and her corset split down the center, pushing outward on the ends of two telescoping rods of tarnished copper. No skin, muscles, or bones were visible, just the hollowed out cavity where her vital organs had once been. The interior of her torso was now a complicated collection of gears and components.

A small bellows opened and contracted in time with her breathing, and a rotary gear with an attached swing arm provided the means of operation for a pump circulating the artificial blood in her system.

"You're a machine," Eddie marveled.

"Partly," she answered, removing a key from where it was hooked on the interior side of her corset. Inserting the key into her mechanism, she wound one of two mainsprings centrally located in her chest cavity. "I still have some human parts, but quite a bit is artificial. I hardly have to drink or eat as my requirements have been drastically reduced, and I don't need much in the way of sleep either."

"Incredible," Eddie said. "I used to be an inventor's assistant before the zombies. I take it you have two mainsprings in order for one to keep everything running while you wind the other."

"Yes," Melanie confirmed. She finished her work, replaced the key, and pressed the internal switch to close her chest plates back into position. "Most people have reacted badly when they know what I am. The people who altered me wanted me to endure, no matter what. They hoped I would be the key to purging the undead, a hunter who needs very little sleep or food and who can fight endlessly."

"What about when the zombies are all gone?" Eddie inquired. "What will you do then?"

"Hunting the undead is my purpose," Melanie answered coldly. "I have no reason for being beyond that. What place is there in society for a hunter of the undead if there are no undead?"

"We all became something new when the zombies arrived," Eddie told her. "Who is to say we couldn't become something else after they're gone?"

Eddie was about to say more when Melanie abruptly looked toward the front door. She tapped her wrists together, bringing out her twin blades. The undead were coming. It was time to do what she had been made to do and slay them all.